The world is undergoing rapid change, we have gone from the era of bankers to the banking industry.
I start with a commonplace, evidence that raises a question: is there a limit to the speed of transformation, a kind of evolutionary ceiling? Or, on the contrary, will the technological revolution have the consequence that our collective destiny will never again have a port where we can rest?
In these articles I try to think about the world, exchange ideas about what worries, surprises or moves me. I am mainly a lawyer by training and I lead a Caixa Agrícola that has the largest balance sheet in the country operating in a single municipality. We have grown a lot, we will probably present our best results in 111 years of history, but we need the humility to never stop thinking about the immensity of the world, what transcends us and what we can stop in a movement that forces us to run wildly, without taking care of what we sow along the way.
Today I propose that we think about the impossibility of bankers existing as we recognize them. Men like Manuel Espírito Santo, in the Estado Novo, and Jorge Jardim Gonçalves, after 1974, are unrepeatable for a number of factors.
Let’s look at both. Manuel, son of the founder of Banco Espírito Santo, and great-uncle of Ricardo Salgado, was the greatest figure in the second generation of the family. For decades he had a relationship with Salazar, they met every Friday in São Bento. He told the president of the Council about the world – what happened in the places of the rich, how the real economy worked and the reason for supporting certain projects based on instinct. Salazar asked him for several things, and that’s how the Ritz was born, the first hotel that wouldn’t embarrass us when compared to the best in the world.
Jardim Gonçalves, not being, like Manuel, the owner of the capital, founded BCP and transformed it into the largest private Portuguese bank. He had come from the Agricultural and Atlantic Banks and was responsible for a computing revolution that changed the entire face of business. To this competence he added risky and daring operations… through OPAs and internationalization to Greece, Poland and the Netherlands, he challenged the then usual placidity of our banking. Jardim had a life as an engineer, had been in the Colonial War and made a point of calling all employees by name.
One and the other were gentlemen. They had a humanistic culture, their own thinking and practical knowledge of life. They knew about human beings, were patriots and believed in decision-making centers.
In fact, like Rui Vilar and Artur Santos Silva, in another dimension. Being a banker was a way of seeing life, with anchored principles and a business relationship that nurtured trust and respect. Interestingly, Vilar and Santos Silva, at the end of their lives, moved from banks to the leadership of the Gulbenkian Foundation.
The two, like António Champalimaud, who donated the legitimate portion of his inheritance to create a foundation, sought social correction, the return to the community and the country of what it had given them. Even Champalimaud, resentful of Portugal, wanted it to be like this, adjusted the accounts and calmed its trajectory.
It was the ethics of the time and the risk culture that always existed. As I am president of a cooperative, I cannot help but feel part of this national financial and social movement, the essence of cooperativism.
Yes, the bankers died. Or rather, the bankers were buried by what time demands. Money is lent to those who comply with the algorithm and the leaders’ decision-making room has decreased – presenting a good innovative project is no longer enough. Those who decide on banking are policies, regulations, regulations, determined in most cases outside the country, with justification in the idea of banking union.
The public humiliation to which the country was subjected during the troika They discredited our financial institutions and it was important to “regain” trust through credible risk models.
There is, therefore, no room for enlightened people or gentlemen to emerge — what is asked is that the banks are led by those who respect the rules and are technically competent. Jardim Gonçalves would currently not have been able to help the Jerónimo Martins Group, after the failure of the operation in Brazil, and João de Oliveira, from Banco Atlântico, would not have supported the Sonae Group, allowing it to gain national and European scale. With these two examples, it is clear how much wealth the country would have lost as they are the largest employers.
A bank anticipates time, creates the future.
There are no bankers because, today, having a thought is not essential. Culture is no longer a central concern for financial institutions. There are no bankers since people started saying that money has no country. Or when employees became disposable employees – bankers knew who they worked for, they knew the employees’ names and they felt the bank was theirs, they were family. This no longer exists, it is past.
In Lisbon, the banks disappeared from Rua do Ouro and were replaced by hotels. The internationalization of banking, and also of the largest law firms, led the country to run out of secrets, even due to the impossibility of having somewhere to store them.
Anyone who reads me is likely, at this point, to bet that I am pessimistic. That he preferred the past, in which bankers were emotionally rich and rationally prepared. There is a part of who I am, and what I try to be, where this happens. But nothing is linear and it is impossible to stop the wind with your hands.
In banking, simplification and diversity, proportionality and specialty, and intelligence are not abstract propositions. The bank is not unique, it is diverse. Savings, development, cooperative and commercial banks have matrices that justify reflection. Creating a model for commercial banking and applying it to other types of banking can pose a risk. Going against our nature is never smart.
Active, intrusive and intelligent supervision by national central authorities is essential in defending customers, banks and the country. The Portuguese supervisor and his teams have done work that deserves praise and have known how to deal with banking diversity.
But, as a country, we need capital, investment and innovation, and so there are reasons not to give in to pessimism.
And then, intelligent cooperativism can be one of the paths to progress.
I will write as I mentioned in my first column about the future. And I promise that the weight of hope, with concrete ideas, will always be greater than fear.
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